Aiming at mainstream gamers is stupid, like you pointed out. I doubt violet was suggesting that.

There are more people than you think who like old games and a surprising amount of people who like 2d action games. I don't think liero is popular any more, but there is a game out there called soldat which is currently pretty popular. JJ2 is obviously different, but it's obvious that not everyone is drawn to mainstream games.

Of course, there's one key difference about those games I mentioned. It is not that they are more violent or more "mature", it is that they are freeware. The jj2 community has a rather hardline anti-piracy stance, at least officially.

Basically if the game is really easy to get for free, more people will get it, especially since it is relatively small. It won't become popular though. Getting the source code would also work but we all know how likely that is.

Also, getting the patches for jj2 isn't as hard as you would think. The most popular abandonware site out there has a useful link on the download page, and every other download site I know of makes patches easily availbe.

And no, I am not going to give any links here or mention anything specifically, so keep your hands off that edit button you dirty admins. >:(